Comparative Essay
'Standing Female Nude' by Caroline Duffy: Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art. Maybe. He is concerned with volume, space. I with the next meal. You're getting thin, Madame, this is not good. My breasts hang slightly low, the studio is cold. In the tea-leaves I can see the Queen of England gazing on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs, moving on. It makes me laugh. His name is Georges. They tell me he's a genius. There are times he does not concentrate and stiffens for my warmth. He possesses me on canvas as he dips the brush repeatedly into the paint. Little man, you've not the money for the arts I sell. Both poor, we make our living how we can. I ask him Why do you do this? Because I have to. There's no choice. Don't talk. My smile confuses him. These artists take themselves too seriously. At night I fill myself with wine and dance around the bars. When it's finished he shows me proudly, lights a cigarette. I say Twelve francs and get my shawl. It does not look like me.
‘Parallel Universe’ by Eli Rezkallah:
Intro and First Body Paragraph:
The representation of women in media has long been misogynistic and unrealistic, and hence, there are and have been a variety of ways of responding to this sexist representation. Poet Caroline Duffy and artist Eli Rezkallah have maintained strong, feminist-minded perspectives through a large amount of their work, Rezkallah drawing attention specifically to the bigoted and misanthropic advertisements seen in the mid-nineteen hundreds (of which many of the ideas still propagate today) in his ‘Parallel Universe’ advertisement series, and Duffy, whose poems cover a large range of individual stories, often focusing on gender and oppression. This can be presented clearly in ‘Standing Female Nude’, a poem from the perspective of a painting model in the early nineteen hundreds who shows great disdain for her work, as well as the painter himself.
Rezkallah’s near splitting parody of the original 1950s Hardee’s advertisement uses satirical humour, manipulating the visuals the audience have come to expect. It is this reversal of the common gender dichotomy that forces its audience to really think about why it seems so incongruous and discomforting. This discomfort is created through the feminine depiction of Razkallah in a housewife-like position – Razkallah’s skin is unnaturally flawless, lacking blemishes and seems completely artificial. He is dressed in pastel-pink and white colours, wearing an apron, standing in a kitchen. This presentation heavily contrasts with the expected masculine role at the time – Men were seen as the dominant decision-makers in households, expected to work and make decisions on the family’s behalf, while women were expected to cook, clean, and take care of the children – far more trivial tasks. The application of pink and lighter colours further emphasize these reversed gender roles; pink has connotations of being a more feminine colour. His soft, pastel outfit also blends in with the spotless, pink interior of the kitchen, suggesting that women are so commonly just perceived as nothing more than housewives, and the clear contrast between his and his wife’s outfit’s colours, which is darker with less skin showing, puts her in a seemingly far greater position of power.
Duffy’s poem, ‘Standing Female Nude’, also uses a subversion of expectations…
